What is 'Nature'?

Book 2 explained that there is a big difference among our pains and pleasures.

Pride and humility, love and hatred are excited when anything presented to us:

• is related to the object of that passion, and
• produces a separate sensation related to the sensation of that passion.

Virtue and vice are attended with these circumstances.

They must:

• be placed in ourselves or others*
• excite pleasure or uneasiness, and
• give rise to one of these four passions.

These clearly distinguish them from the pleasure and pain arising from inanimate objects that are often unrelated to us.

This is perhaps the most considerable effect that virtue and vice have on the mind.

From what principles is this pleasure and pain, that distinguishes moral good and evil, derived from?

• Where does it arise in the human mind?

It is absurd to imagine that these sentiments are produced by an original quality and primary constitution in every instance.

We have an infinite number of duties. It is impossible that our original instincts should extend to each of them. The mind cannot take all the precepts contained in the most complete system of ethics, from infancy.

Such a method is incompatible to the usual maxims which conduct nature. A few principles produce all that variety we observe in the universe. Everything is carried on in the easiest and most simple manner.

We therefore need to:

• abridge these primary impulses, and
• find some more general principles on which all our notions of morals are founded.

Three Definitions Of The Word ‘Nature’

Should we search for these principles in nature?

• Or must we look for them in some other origin?

Our answer depends on the definition of ‘Nature’ because it is most ambiguous and equivocal.

If ’nature’ is opposed to ‘miracles’, then the following are natural:

• The distinction between vice and virtue
• Every event which has ever happened in the world, except those miracles, on which our religion is founded.

We make no very extraordinary discovery when we say that the sentiments of vice and virtue are natural in this sense.

But ’nature’ may also be opposed to ‘rare’ and ‘unusual’. This is the common meaning of nature. In this sense, disputes often arise on what is natural or unnatural.

We generally do not have any very precise standard to solve these disputes.

‘Frequent’ and ‘rare’ depend on the number of observed examples. This number may gradually increase or decrease. It will be impossible to fix any exact boundaries between them.

If ever there were anything natural in this sense, moral sentiments may be it. Since no nation or person was utterly deprived of morals, who never showed the smallest approbation or dislike of manners.

These sentiments are so rooted in our constitution and temper. It is impossible to destroy them without entirely confounding the human mind by disease or madness.

But ’nature’ may also mean not man-made. In this sense, it may be disputed whether the notions of virtue are natural or not.

We readily forget, that men's designs, projects, and views are principles as necessary in their operation as heat and cold, moist and dry.
    We usually set them in opposition to the other principles of nature.
I think it is impossible to answer whether the sense of virtue is natural or artificial.
    Our sense of some virtues is artificial, and that of others natural.
    This question will be more proper in the exact detail of each vice and virtue.14


Based on these definitions of natural and unnatural, the systems which assert that virtue is natural and vice is unnatural are most unphilosophical.
    If natural means non-miraculous, then vice and virtue are equally natural.
    If natural means ordinary, then virtue will perhaps be found to be the most unnatural.
        Heroic virtue will be found as unusual as the most brutal barbarity.
    If natural means not man-made, both vice and virtue are equally artificial and out of nature.
    Actions themselves are:
        artificial, and
        performed with a certain design and intention.
            Otherwise, actions could never be ranked under merit or demerit.
    Therefore, it is impossible that natural and unnatural characters can ever mark the boundaries of vice and virtue.

Thus, we are still brought back to our first position, that: virtue is distinguished by the pleasure, and vice is distinguished by the pain that any action, sentiment, or character gives us by its mere view and contemplation.

This decision is very commodious because it reduces us to this simple question: Why does any action or sentiment make us feel good or bad, without us looking for any incomprehensible relations and qualities? We could never clearly conceive these relations and qualities in nature nor in our imagination.

I flatter myself that I have executed most of my present design by a question which is not ambiguous and obscure.